Gallery: Art Competition Shows Off the Unexpected Beauty of Science
01east-west-west-east
Science isn't just about collecting data and making charts and graphs. Experiments often produce moments of inspiring beauty: A dye dropped into water gives the impression of a green flame erupting from a murky black sea. Boring black cobalt oxide becomes brilliant blue when heated to 800 degrees Celsius. And an image of coral takes on a different character when two eyes suddenly peer out from its center. The [Art of Science competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience ) at [Princeton University](http://www.princeton.edu/main/) challenges scientists to record the sometimes fleeting moments when science becomes art. [This year's competition](http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/news/archive/?id=10356) drew 170 entries from 24 departments throughout the university; a jury selected three winners, and three additional entries were chosen by viewers. Here are a few of our favorites from among the entries, with captions written by the artists ... er, scientists. __Above:__ East-West, West-East -------------------- __First Place, Jury__ __Martin Jucker, Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences__ The winds around our globe are preferentially directed from west to east, or east to west, and much less so in the north-south directions. As a result, atmospheric phenomena can travel around the globe, exchanging information even from remote places of the Earth easily. We see in the picture surfaces of constant wind around Earth, averaged over time. Blue is east-to-west, red west-to-east directed wind. *Image and Caption: [Martin Jucker](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjucker/) and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
02merger-and-acquisition
Merger and Acquisition ---------------------- __Daniel Quinn, Brian Rosenberg, Amanda DeGiorgi, and Alexander Smits__ __Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering__ The intermingling of two fluids can be remarkably intricate. Here we highlight the complexity of such flows by imaging a drop of fluorescent dye plunging into quiescent water. At the droplet's forefront is a stunning horseshoe-like structure that commonly appears when one fluid slides past another. While the droplet's core is bulbous and coherent, turbulence stretches its wake into gossamer strands. Eventually the tendrils are so thin that dye and water coalesce via molecular diffusion. *Image and Caption: [Daniel Quinn](http://www.princeton.edu/~danielq/), Brian Rosenberg, Amanda DeGiorgi, [Alexander Smits](http://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/smits/), and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
03cobalt-blue
Cobalt Blue ----------- __Jason Krizan__ __Department of Chemistry__ In the Cava Lab, cooking up new materials at 1400 degrees Celsius can really get materials stuck to the containers. We try all sorts of things to clean the alumina (Al2O3) containers. In this method, we attempt to dissolve the contaminants in a molten glass, which is then poured out of the crucible at 800 degrees Celsius onto an aluminum plate where it beads up and cools. That lovely blue came from some crusty black cobalt oxide that was a little too cooked. *Image and Caption: [Jason Krizan](http://www.princeton.edu/~cavalab/group/krizan.html) and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
04maze-dweller
Maze Dweller ------------ __Chhaya Werner '14__ __Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology__ That sweet little face peering out of a coral labyrinth is that of a a goby fish. A goby fish is dependent on coral for its home, and in turn will often clean algae that would otherwise smother the coral. I took this photo in the course of field research for the Coral Reefs lab course in Panama (EEB 346) for a project on the ecology of coral reefs, focusing on interactions between corals, algae, and sea urchins. *Image and Caption: [Chhaya Werner](http://www.princeton.edu/bridgeyear/updates/archives/?id=10089), and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
05medusa-2
Medusa ------ __People's Third Place__ __Jamie Barr and Cliff Brangwynne__ __Departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Molecular Biology__ This bright clump of worms resembles the wild snakes that surrounded the head of the mythological sea monster Medusa. But unlike Medusa's snakes, these worms became sticky and connected during an experiment designed to understand how molecules determine cell and organism size. C. elegans worms have a transparent nature that makes them ideal for fluorescence microscopy. This single image captures all levels of the central dogma of biology: DNA (stained in blue) and pre-processed ribosomal RNA (stained in red), while the worms are a transgenic line with fib1::gfp protein (in green). *Image and Caption: Jamie Barr, [Cliff Brangwynne](http://www.princeton.edu/cbe/people/faculty/brangwynne/> target=)and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
06cocoa-engineering
Cocoa Engineering ----------------- __Alex Jordan, Sigrid Adriaenssens, and Axel Kilian__ __Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Architecture__ A structure made entirely out of chocolate? While it sounds like something out of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, the idea has a serious goal: to systematically understand how the process of design can interact with unexplored materials. What you see here is an inverted hanging shell built with flat 'frames' made of chocolate, a quarter of an inch thick each, and welded together with liquid chocolate. The result of this curved shape is minimal stresses in a material whose strength-to-weight ratio is 24 times less than that of concrete. This proof-of-concept vividly demonstrates the unprecedented potential of "intelligent design" and new workflow processes to design and build structures informed by material constraints. *Image and Caption: [Alex Jordan](http://formfindinglab.princeton.edu/people/alex-jourdan/), [Sigrid Adriaenssens](http://www.princeton.edu/cee/people/display_person/?netid=sadriaen), [Axel Kilian](http://soa.princeton.edu/content/axel-kilian), and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
07bridging-the-gap
Bridging the Gap ---------------- __People's Second Choice__ __Jason Wexler and Howard A. Stone__ __Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering__ When drops of liquid are trapped in a thin gap between two solids, a strong negative pressure develops inside the drops. If the solids are flexible, this pressure deforms the solids to close the gap. In our experiment the solids are transparent, which allows us to image the drops from above. Alternating dark and light lines represent lines of constant gap height, much like the lines on a topological map. These lines are caused by light interference, which is the phenomenon responsible for the beautiful rainbow pattern in an oil slick. The blue areas denote the extent of the drops. Since the drops pull the gap closed, the areas of minimum gap height (i.e. maximum deformation) are inside the drops, at the center of the concentric rings. *Image and Caption: Jason Wexler, [Howard A. Stone](http://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/stone/), and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
08exposed
Exposed ------- __Ohad Fried__ __Department of Computer Science__ This work shows a reconstruction of a face from an anonymized video. Given a video stream containing a blurred, unrecognized face, the data from the individual video frames is combined to create a good approximation of the original face. The connection between frames and mutual information is what makes the reconstruction possible. The result is an intriguing "ghost image" of the subject. *Image and Caption: [Ohad Fried](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ohad/cv.html) and [Princeton University Art of Science Competition](www.princeton.edu/artofscience)*
